Elyse’s chore always was to crush them,
a decade already spent crushing them.
The crushing started as she helped clean up
from the violence her sixth birthday party incited:
after Mr. Frank, their next door neighbor, smacked
her mom on the forehead with two drunken lips,
a little too much loving thy neighbor for her father’s taste,
who then added in great haste with just three jealous gulps
another can to the Natural Light collection—
and a decade of Kansas Correction;
and not for the first time,
his upside down horseshoe ring shattered teeth,
after a swift backhand to her mom’s freckled face;
while somehow still clutching six candles and Natural Light,
her round butt stuffed in skinny pants landed
on Elyse’s Sponge Bob Square Pants’ cake,
as a chorus of police sirens in the distance belted out
Happy Birthday to You.
And while the shrill of the tune neared,
Elyse’s dad lifted her onto the stepstool;
she wobbled a bit at first like how her dad just toddled
with her in tow bursting through
their kitchen’s swinging saloon doors.
As she lost the grip on her little stuffed black lamb,
Elyse steadied herself on the stepstool
that raised her up to face the wall-mounted can crusher,
her dad instructing her how to crush them.
“Here, now you try. Crush it!” he said,
handing her another emptied can.
The Happy Birthday tune ended,
a frozen moment then a nod from her father,
as he raised his hands as if in praise toward the ceiling,
the saloon doors slamming open—
county party crashers, Glocks drawn, then cuffed him.
She had watched her dad do it many times before that day:
crush them over and over again.
With two hands, gingerly, almost reverently,
like a priest placing the chalice in the tabernacle,
Elyse placed the can in the mouth of the crusher
and twisted it until its lettering faced her;
she knew by then what Natural Light spelled,
and would soon learn more of its bewitching spells
when Mr. Frank would become Uncle Frank,
and later when dozens of other Uncle Franks filled the ranks.
She then jerked her hands away as if not to get bitten,
like how she once jerked her hands from her Whiffle Ball
stuck between the snarling teeth of the Hound Dog;
she then placed her two tiny hands on the lever and pulled,
as if in slow motion the can began crinkling,
reminding her of the sounds when her hungry stomach growled
as it flattened like one of mom’s rare hamburger patties;
it then spat the last of its warm venom into her face,
like that warm loogie Willie Hale hocked in her face
at lunchtime in kindergarten last year.
She crushed them, later she was told, to save the environment;
she knew the truth by then, though, was to crush them, to recycle them
to earn more money to buy more of them,
hundreds of them, no, probably more like thousands,
thousands of those silver 12-ounce aluminum cans:
a backdrop for their eye-grabbing blue and red lettering
in Natural Light frozen on their refrigerated faces;
sweat glistened from them as their chilled bodies warmed
in the calloused grips many drunkards grasped them with;
curtains closed to the Light of the world that’s come,
opening instead to the beams of artificial light
that now cracked through their dawns and darkened
the lines on her mom’s and each of her Uncle Frank’s faces—
during that decade of her dad’s incarceration.
She crushed and crushed and crushed!
Over and over again she crushed them,
yet their stale remains still crowded the kitchen counter:
some stood shoulder to shoulder,
while others lied sideways corrupting
like the breathing corpses passed out on mom’s couches,
some of their midsections squished in, their mouths gaping,
gaping like her mom’s in the throes of dry heaves,
like last night, for instance,
as she bent over the back porch railing
and waited for the storm clouds inside her stomach to burst—
a patch of petunias raising umbrellas below.
Elyse then took a last deep drag from her Newport
and held her breath, while dropping
her cigarette into the mouth of the abyss;
she then listened to that familiar fizzle,
as backwash from her Natural Light extinguished it.
She then crushed its body with one bare hand
and tossed it sideways into the dented heap;
then exhaling the breath she held from her Newport,
she doused sixteen flaming years from her birthday cake;
her firstborn, little Billy, swaddled
in his carrier like a caboose on her back.
His grandmom’s Natural Light still remained unopened,
as it perspired in her swollen hand;
her swollen body stuffed inside
its extra large Metallica T-Shirt and Walmart sweats;
her yellowish gaze now fixed
on a Styrofoam cup half filled with black Folgers,
cradled in her just-paroled husband’s gaunt hand,
and that jailhouse tattoo of a cross
that now replaced the upside down horseshoe ring
that once weaponized his swift backhand.
Her yellowish gaze then like a spell got broken,
the saloon doors creaking on crooked hinges,
as Elyse reached into the night
and fumbled in the fridge for more Natural Light.
The Poet's Point 